The Further Tales of Tempest Landry (2 page)

It took me three months to get in to visit Tempest again. For the first four weeks he was under disciplinary lockdown for having had a fight with a prison guard. After that he simply refused to see me.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Angel,” the admittance officer would say whenever I presented myself at the admissions window.

“Is he on report again?” I'd ask.

“No, sir. Ezzard has turned over a new leaf,” the middle-aged white man told me after six weeks of failed attempts. “Ever since we started up the CVP again…you know, the conjugal visit program, he hasn't broken rule one.”

“Oh,” I said, “I see. Well I guess that makes sense.”

“You better believe it, sir. Sex is better than morphine for the kind of pain these men got. Thumpin' that mattress beats Bible thumpin' five times out of six.”

I showed up every Saturday at one p.m. undeterred by Tempest's refusal to see me. The admittance officer, Hiram Pele, would always say no…until one dark afternoon in March.

“He sent word to bring you down whenever you got here,” Hiram told me.

Forty-five minutes later—after I had been questioned and searched, searched again, and reminded of a dozen rules that all visitors had to obey—I was allowed into the visitor's hall.

I became suspicious when I saw that I was the only visitor and Tempest the only convict sitting on the opposite side of the bulletproof glass. My mistrust was that Gabriel had devised a situation that would be most conducive to trip up Tempest Landry and send him to an eternity with his greatest enemy.

Tempest for his part was all smiles.

“Hey, Angel, how you doin', brother?” he said into the mouthpiece of the intercom phone.

“You seem to be in good spirits,” I said.

“Good woman, good spirit.”

“I see. And how is it being incarcerated?”

Tempest looked out beyond me into a distance that didn't exist. He became serious, contemplative, and remained so for more than a minute.

Finally he said, “Imagine you got a son on the other side of a closed door, your boy who you love more than life. He's callin' to ya. He wanna play catch or hear a story before bed but here you are behind a locked door with the lights turned down low and bad meat in your gut.”

“But there's no son calling out to you,” I said.

“Life,” he said with emphasis. “Life is on the other side of the door and living death is here where I am. It's like a place on the map, like a strange station the train just stopped in an' the conductor shoutin', ‘Last stop! Everybody out!' ”

For some reason the words tore at me. I had a daughter, and I had a son on the way. Life was good for me and I didn't deserve it.

“What about the man you stabbed?” I asked, to change the subject. “How's he doing?”

“The eye I hit is just about blind now. Other than that he a'ight.”

“I don't want to take advantage of you, Tempest,” I said, “but isn't what you did to that man…”

“Reverent Johnson,” Tempest said.

“Reverend?”

“No. Reverent like he worship somethin' or somebody.”

“So,” I continued, “isn't what you did to this man Reverent a sin?”

“Naw, man. Sin? Sin is if you hurt someone and they ain't done nuthin' to you—mostly. What happened between me an' Reverent is what you call a bitter necessity.”

“It was necessary for you to slash his face, to blind him?”

“Half blind,” Tempest corrected, “and yeah, it was absolutely necessary. Up here in the joint a man fightin' for his name is self-defense pure an' simple. I let somebody like that fool talk me down an' I will be fightin' every day an' every night for the next eighty-two years.”

“You honestly believe that you are innocent?”

The right side of Tempest's upper lip raised into a sneer. His visage was like that of a feral beast sensing danger or food.

“Do you honestly think that I should be in this prison when I ain't nevah killed nobody or done anything else worth a eighty-two-year sentence behind bars?”

“Of course not.”

“What would you do,” he asked, “if it was your child up in here gettin' raped an' beaten, cut and chained? What would you do if that child was innocent but made to spend weeks at a time bunged up in a four-by-four closet surrounded by men that had been turned into howlin' beasts?”

The images came to me and then the anger. I realized that if Gabriel had left my daughter in the situation Tempest was in, I would sunder the walls and punish her torturers. This sudden insight made me shiver.

The pain of Tempest's circumstances gnawed at my human insides. I felt that I had somehow betrayed myself and all that I'd ever believed in. I had been a sliver in the being of divinity for time immemorial and still it all came down to this: a man suffering from fates that were too large and too proud to heed his agony.

That's when Tempest grinned. I was shocked by this sudden expression of happiness.

“What do you have to smile about, Tempest?”

“Fredda Lane.”

I had witnessed the entire history of the human race unfold across the tapestry of time. I'd seen wars and unexpected heroism, bravery unequaled and cowardice so base that even an angel felt outrage. For all that, I had rarely responded with surprise or wonder to humanity. Humanity is, after all, a small, petty, mortal thing.

But Tempest Landry surprised me almost every time we met.

“Fredda Lane? But, but she was the woman who killed the man whose body you inherited.”

“Yeah,” Tempest said with a satisfied smile. “I figured that she might'a felt bad about it, so I got me some brownie points and received permission to get on the computer for a quarter hour. From there I got on Facebook and left Fredda a note, ‘You didn't get me on the ferryboat but the cops pulled me out of the drink and now I'm doin' eighty years.' After that I said that I was sorry I hurt her and I hoped that she could forgive me.

“Damn, Angel, that woman got the body of some kinda
Playboy
model or stripper or somethin'. I look forward to her more than anything I evah had on the outside. You know prison make you appreciate things a free man don't even know he take for granted.

“That girl come up here and beg me to forgive her and I said there was only one way.” Tempest smiled then. “But she knew a hundred ways and planned to show me every one.”

“So you lied to her?”

“Lied? No. I'm alive ain't I? She tried to kill this here body and here it is—with me inside. It's a lie that I committed the crimes of Ezzard Walcott but I'm still here and as long as I am, Fredda gonna come up and kiss it and make it feel better.”

“And so you're all right, then?” I said.

“No, man, I'm in prison.”

“But you said that you—”

“Don't mattah what I said, Angel. I'm in here behind bars with desperate men through no fault of my own. Your people done did it to me again and still you don't want me to deny the rule of heaven. You still want to send me to the pit.”

I had no reply. He expected none.

Then Tempest smiled again.

“But I got me a plan.”

“Oh? What's that?”

“I need your help, brother man.”

“I am not here to help you, Tempest. My job is your downfall.”

“Your
job
, if I remember right, is to get me to see that I'm a sinner not worthy of heaven, not to throw me down by trickery or by force.”

Again, I did not answer.

“So,” he said, knowing that my silence meant that I agreed with his words, “I need you to go and talk to Fredda.”

“Fredda?”

“Yeah, man. She know things about Ezzard but she won't talk up in here 'cause she think that they got ears in the CVP trailer. Maybe they do. I need you to find out from her all you can about me. Maybe there's somethin' that could get me outta here.”

“That is not my job.”

“Maybe not but this here ain't right, man. It ain't right. Sooner or later I'ma commit some kinda sin 'cause that's what it's like in prison. You might not be bent comin' in but you sure the hell will be before you get out…if you ever get out.”

The door behind Tempest opened and a line of prisoners were led in. Behind me visitors began to arrive. I wondered what Tempest paid to get an early meeting with me.

“What you say, man?” he asked.

I looked at him and felt my spirit; an essence once completely without matter now anchored in flesh; flesh that I had come to love and even believe in. In many ways I was as mortal as Tempest but I could not abandon my faith.

I stood up, stoically silent.

“Angel,” he called but I did not answer him.

“You know I got the power to shout down the walls of heaven,” he warned.

I hung the receiver on its hook and walked out of that room and into the long hall that led toward the outside world where my wife and child and unborn child were waiting. With every step I knew dread because I was sure that before long Tempest would denounce heaven or else become an unrepentant sinner; either way my tenure on earth, and my earthly bliss, would be over.

I have come a long way from heaven.

Once I was known as Joshua, Accounting Angel of Sin. From the other side of eternity I watched and recorded every act of Man; good, bad, and indifferent. This may sound like something miraculous but, when you understand the nature of the Infinite, it is really quite ordinary. From where I stood there was no such thing as time passing. I could see everything—past and present—and was therefore able to go through a mortal's life history of good and evil as he or she stood in line awaiting judgment from the Guardian of the Gates of Heaven.

I loved my job while I had it. I believed in heaven and the perfect order of the moral universe. I knew that I was part of the greatest good allowing for the sins and acts of charity performed by mortals and the rewards and punishments those transgressions and kindnesses engendered.

Then I was given a mortal body and sent to earth on a mission of damnation. Tempest Landry, the Errant Soul, had refused the verdict of heaven. Because of this exercise of free will, he threatened the balance of a system that has existed longer than the atoms in my now mortal body.

The task seemed straightforward enough. All I had to do was convince Tempest of his sins, see him off to hell, and return to the bosom of heaven.

But when I arrived in the temporal realm I realized that sin was not such a simple thing to gauge or judge; that mortality brings with it a frail divinity and grace that I never knew in eternity.

And so I found myself one Tuesday afternoon, sitting in a metal chair, in front of a sheet of bulletproof glass, awaiting the arrival of a convict who held the balance of this world and the next in the weak flesh of his hands.

He wore an orange jumpsuit with little red crosses printed all over it. His hair was cut close to the scalp and there was a barely discernible bruise on the dark skin beneath his right eye.

He picked up the receiver we needed to hear each other. I did the same.

“Hey, Angel,” he said, a slight smile on his lips.

At one time that smile was a grin and the man behind it fought bravely against a sentence that he felt was unjust. But prison had dampened Tempest's spirit, paying for crimes he had not committed, wearing the body but not bearing the blame of the murdered Ezzard Walcott.

“Tempest.”

He stared into my eyes.

“I thought you was done with me, man,” he said.

“After our last visit I went home to kiss Branwyn and Tethamalanianti good-bye. I was sure that you would renounce the rule of heaven and banish or destroy me and my kind.”

Tempest laughed.

“Why you talk like that, man?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“Like you was writin' the Bible with every word you say.”

“I went to see Fredda Lane.”

“You did? When?”

“Yesterday. She's living on the eighth floor of a building that has a broken elevator, with her sister and her sister's three children. She was fired from her job as teacher's assistant and—”

“Angel,” Tempest said, interrupting me, “I don't need to know every damn thing. I ain't here to judge nobody. What did she say?”

“She repented.”

“Say what?”

“When I told her that I was your friend she started crying…right there in the doorway. I could see that she was bereft so I helped her inside and got her seated on the sofa. There, with a baby lying next to us and two other children watching television in the corner, she confessed to the sin of trying to murder Ezzard Walcott.”

“She told you about it herself?” Tempest asked.

“Some mortals, I believe, recognize my nature and act accordingly.”

“Like people on the top floor of a burnin' buildin' jumpin' out the window when there's nowhere else to go,” my charge said cynically. “What did she say she did to Ezzard?”

“You don't know?”

“We ain't never talked about it. I got other things on my mind when we get in the conjugal visit trailer and anyway she thinks I know because I was there—sorta.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said. “It was a mistake.”

“That's what them cops shot me down in the first place said. I guess there's just a whole lotta accidental homicide goin' on.”

His wry grin rankled me. “I think I like you more when you're serious.”

“Yeah, Angel, only I ain't writin' the Bible when I shower and shave in the mornin'. I'm just livin' my life, locked up behind bars.”

“Why didn't you?” I asked then.

“Didn't I what?”

“Renounce the rule of heaven.”

“Is that what you want?”

“No.”

Tempest sat back in his chair and stared. He was at best an impatient man and we had only fifteen minutes for the visit, but he stared at me the way I used to gaze out from heaven's gate—having all the time in the world.

“Don't you know that I would if I could, Angel?” he said at last. “Don't you know that I want to turn my back on angels and devils, good and bad…black and white?”

It was my turn to stare.

“You don't get it, do ya?” he asked. “You think that sin an' evil an' covetin' comes easy to a poor black man. You think that given a chance, removed from church, that any man would do wrong.” He shook his head, disgusted with me. “What did Fredda tell you about killin' Ezzard?”

For a moment I was confused by the question.

“What?”

“Fredda. What did she say about killin' Ezzard?”

“That, that, that she had put a tranquilizer in his beer,” I said, slowly remembering the confession. “That she was going to wait till he fell asleep on the ferry and then call the police to arrest him.”

“Why didn't she call the cops, then?” Tempest said. “Why she turn around and kill him?”

“It was a cold night,” I said, remembering the tear-strained words. “They were on the stern deck of the ferry looking out over the water. It was dark and they were the only ones standing outside. Ezzard was succumbing to the drug and was drunk. He kissed Fredda and told her that he loved her and made gestures as if he wanted to have sex with her right there. She became enraged and pushed him away. Because of the inebriation he stumbled backward, fell against the rail, and went over the side into the water.

“The moment he fell she screamed for help. People came and she told them that you—he—fell overboard. But it was already too late. No one had seen it happen. He was gone.”

“But if she told them I was dead, then why the cops come after me?”

“They thought she was lying, that she was trying to make them think that you had died. She has a boyfriend now, you know.”

“She does?”

“He doesn't know that she comes to visit you. But she's afraid he might find out.”

“Why she come then?”

“She didn't say but I believe that it is a combination of guilt and gratefulness.”

“Grateful for what?”

“She believes that you could have told the police about her, that you could have blamed her for harboring you, for helping you avoid arrest. She feels terrible that she almost murdered you and humbled that you forgave her. She wants to succor you but loves this new man and fears that if he finds out that he will leave her.”

The crease that showed only rarely on Tempest's brow became mortally apparent. He heard her sins and worried over them, where, over the impossible span of eternity, I had only passed judgment.

When he looked into my eyes he was no longer Ezzard Walcott nor was he a prisoner. I was not an angel or a man or an agent of damnation. He nodded at me, one being to another, and I returned the gesture because it was expected.

“Time's up, Walcott,” a guard said.

Tempest glanced over his shoulder and then back at me.

“I understand,” I said. “I'll do what I can.”

“Did she give you anything?”

“Yes.”

Tempest laughed again.

“I spend so much time arguin' with you over sin that I lose track and don't even worry about my own predicament.”

I smiled and nodded.

The guard put a hand on Tempest's shoulder.

He cradled the phone and got to his feet.

As they led him away I felt that crease in my own forehead. It was sympathy for someone living under the strain of blind justice. Heaven was lucky that day that I, for all intents and purposes a fallen angel, was not in the position to pass judgment on Infinity.